FILM REVIEW; Grizzly Bear And Her Boy In a Postcard From Afar

Pretty as a picture and pious as a sermon, ''Grizzly Falls'' combines old-fashioned boys' adventure with a heavy-handed modern lecture on parenthood. The film possesses a decent heart but suffers from a simple mind.

Directed by Stewart Raffill (''Swiss Family Robinson'') and written by Richard Beattie, this Canadian-British co-production is constructed as a flashback, illustrating a story told around a wilderness campfire by Old Harry Bankston (Richard Harris) to his two grandchildren.

It is a tale of a self-absorbed parent, Tyrone (Bryan Brown), who learns the meaning of fatherly love only when Harry, as a little boy (Daniel Clark), is carried off into the Canadian Rockies by an enormous female grizzly bear (Ali Oop is its professional name) after Tyrone captures her two cubs.

While Tyrone and his half-Indian friend, the expert tracker and wise man Joshua McTavish Standing Bear (Tom Jackson), pursue boy and big bear into mountainous, forested terrain cut by rushing rivers, the boy learns to subsist on grubs and raw fish and meat as he and the huge, slavering grizzly develop their own affectionate child-parent relationship.

Mixing Dickensian sentiment with Teddy Roosevelt-era costumes and attitudes toward self-reliance and manhood, ''Grizzly Falls'' tells of Harry's youth in Chicago, where his beloved mother died of consumption while his adventure-loving father was off in the Orient collecting artifacts for a museum.

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Shipped off to a boarding school, the lonely child yearns for his father's return. When that happy day arrives, the man he barely knows whisks the boy off to the Far West, where Tyrone is mounting an expedition to deal with his own childhood trauma by capturing a grizzly alive.

As soon as he and Joshua have recruited a crew of ruffians, including the nasty Genet and his pack of hunting dogs, they're off to the wilderness, where instead of teaching a bear a lesson, the father will learn a few.

Directed by Stewart Raffill; written by Richard Beattie, based on a story by Stuart Margolin; director of photography, Thom Best; production designer, Tom Carnegie; animal trainer, Ruth LaBarge; produced by Peter R. Simpson and Allan Scott; released by Providence Entertainment. Running time: 94 minutes. This film is rated PG.